Manners and Social Usages by Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (great book club books TXT) 📖

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letter of condolence difficult.

 

Perhaps much of our dread of death is the result of a false

education, and the wearing of black may after all be a mistake. At

the moment when we need bright colors, fresh flowers, sunshine,

and beauty, we hide ourselves behind crape veils and make our

garments heavy with ashes; but as it is conventional it is in one

way a protection, and is therefore proper. No one feels like

varying the expressions of a grief which has the Anglo-Saxon

seriousness in it, the Scandinavian melancholy of a people from

whom Nature hides herself behind a curtain of night. To the sunny

and graceful Greek the road of the dead was the Via Felice; it was

the happy way, the gate of flowers; the tombs were furnished as

the houses were, with images of the beloved, and the veriest

trifles which the deceased had loved. One wonders, as the tomb of

a child is opened on the road out of Tanagra, near Athens, and the

toys and hobby-horse and little shoes are found therein, if, after

all, that father and mother were not wiser than we who, like

Constance, “stuff out his vacant garments with his form.” Is there

not something quite unenlightened in the persistence with which we

connect death with gloom?

 

Our correspondents often ask us when a letter of condolence should

be written? As soon as possible. Do not be afraid to intrude on

any grief, It is generally a welcome distraction; to even the most

morbid mourner, to read a letter; and those who are So stunned by

grief as not to be able to write or to read will always have some

willing soul near them who will read and answer for them.

 

The afflicted, however, should never be expected to answer

letters, They can and should receive the kindest and the most

prompt that their friends can indite, Often a phrase on which the

writer has built no hope may be the airy-bridge over which the

sorrowing soul returns slowly and blindly to peace and

resignation. Who would miss the chance, be it one in ten thousand,

of building such a bridge? Those who have suffered and been

strong, those whom we love and respect, those who have the honest

faith in human nature which enables them to read aright the riddle

of this strange world, those who by faith walk over burning

ploughshares and dread no evil, those are the people who write the

best letters of condolence. They do not dwell on our grief, or

exaggerate it, although they are evidently writing to us with a

lump in the throat and a tear in the eye—they do not say so, but

we feel it. They tell us of the certain influence of time, which

will change our present grief into our future joy. They say a few

beautiful words of the friend whom we have lost, recount their own

loss in him in a few fitting words of earnest sympathy which may

carry consolation, if only by the wish of the writer. They beg of

us to be patient. God has brought life and immortality to light

through death, and to those whom “he has thought worthy to

endure,” this thought may ever form the basis of a letter of

condolence.

 

“Give me,” said the dying Herder, “a great thought, that I may

console myself with that.” It is a present of no mean value, a

great thought; and if every letter of condolence could bear with

it one broad phrase of honest sympathy it would be a blessed

instrumentality for carrying patience and resignation, peace and

comfort, into those dark places where the sufferer is eating his

heart out with grief, or where Rachel “weeps for her children, and

will not be comforted, because they are not.”

 

CHAPTER XXIV.

CHAPERONS AND THEIR DUTIES.

 

It is strange that the Americans, so prone to imitate British

customs, have been slow to adopt that law of English society which

pronounces a chaperon an indispensable adjunct of every unmarried

young woman.

 

The readers of “Little Dorrit” will recall the exceedingly witty

sketch of Mrs. General, who taught her young ladies to form their

mouths into a ladylike pattern by saying “papa, potatoes, prunes,

and prism.” Dickens knew very little of society, and cared very

little for its laws, and his ladies and gentlemen were pronounced

in England to be as great failures as his Little Nells and Dick

Swivellers were successes; but he recognized the universality of

chaperons. His portrait of Mrs. General (the first luxury which

Mr. Dorrit allowed himself after inheriting his fortune) shows how

universal is the necessity of a chaperon in English society, and

on the Continent, to the proper introduction of young ladies, and

how entirely their “style” depends upon their chaperon. Of course

Dickens made her funny, of course he made her ridiculous, but he

put her there. An American novelist would not have thought it

worth mentioning, nor would an American papa with two motherless

daughters have thought it necessary, if he travelled with them, to

have a chaperon for his daughters.

 

Of course, a mother is the natural chaperon of her daughters, and

if she understand her duties and the usages of society there is

nothing further to be said. But the trouble is that many American

mothers are exceedingly careless on this point. We need not point

to the wonderful Mrs. Miller—Daisy’s mother—in Henry James,

Jr.‘s, photograph of a large class of American matrons—a woman

who loved her daughter, knew how to take care of her when she was

ill, but did not know in the least how to take care of her when

she was well; who allowed her to go about with young men alone, to

“get engaged,” if so she pleased, and who, arriving at a party

after her daughter had appeared, rather apologized for coming at

all. All this is notoriously true, and comes of our crude

civilization. It is the transition state. Until we learn better,

we must expect to be laughed at on the Pincian Hill, and we must

expect English novelists to paint pictures of us which we resent,

and French dramatists to write plays in which we see ourselves

held up as savages.

 

Europeans have been in the habit of taking care of young girls, as

if they were the precious porcelain of human clay. The American

mamma treats her beautiful daughter as if she were a very common

piece of delft indeed, and as if she could drift down the stream

of life, knocking all other vessels to pieces, but escaping injury

to herself.

 

Owing to the very remarkable and strong sense of propriety which

American women innately possess—their truly healthy love of

virtue, the absence of any morbid suspicion of wrong—this rule

has worked better than any one would have dared hope. Owing, also,

to the exceptionally respectful and chivalrous nature of American

men, it has been possible for a young lady to travel unattended

from Maine to Georgia, or anywhere within the new geographical

limits of our social growth. Mr. Howells founded a romance upon

this principle, that American women do not need a chaperon. Yet we

must remember that all the black sheep are not killed yet, and we

must also remember that propriety must be more attended to as we

cease to be a young and primitive nation, and as we enter the

lists of the rich, cultivated, luxurious people of the earth.

 

Little as we may care for the opinion of foreigners we do not wish

our young ladies to appear in their eyes in a false attitude, and

one of the first necessities of a proper attitude, one of the

first demands of a polished society, is the presence of a

chaperon. She should be a lady old enough to be the mother of her

charge, and of unexceptionable manner. She must know society

thoroughly herself, and respect its laws. She should be above the

suspicion of reproach in character, and devoted to her work. In

England there are hundreds of widows of half-pay

officers—well-born, well-trained, well-educated women—who can be

hired for money, as was Mrs. General, to play this part. There is

no such class in America, but there is almost always a lady who

will gladly perform the task of chaperoning motherless girls

without remuneration.

 

It is not considered proper in England for a widowed father to

place an unmarried daughter at the head of his house without the

companionship of a resident chaperon, and there are grave

objections to its being done here. We have all known instances

where such liberty has been very bad for young girls, and where it

has led to great scandals which the presence of a chaperon would

have averted.

 

The duties of a chaperon are very hard and unremitting, and

sometimes very disagreeable. She must accompany her young lady

everywhere; she must sit in the parlor when she receives

gentlemen; she must go with her to the skating-rink, the ball, the

party, the races, the dinners, and especially to theatre parties;

she must preside at the table, and act the part of a mother, so

far as she can; she must watch the characters of the men who

approach her charge, and endeavor to save the inexperienced girl

from the dangers of a bad marriage, if possible. To perform this

feat, and not to degenerate into a Spanish duenna, a dragon, or a

Mrs. General—who was simply a fool—is a very difficult task.

 

No doubt a vivacious American girl, with all her inherited hatred

of authority, is a troublesome charge. All young people are

rebels. They dislike being watched and guarded. They have no idea

what Hesperidean fruit they are, and they object to the dragon

decidedly.

 

But a wise, well-tempered woman can manage the situation. If she

have tact, a chaperon will add very much to the happiness of her

young charge. She will see that the proper men are introduced;

that her young lady is provided with a partner for the german;

that she is asked to nice places; that she goes well dressed and

properly accompanied; that she gives the return ball herself in

handsome style.

 

“I owe,” said a wealthy widower in New York, whose daughters all

made remarkably happy marriages—“I owe all their happiness to

Mrs. Constant, whom I was so fortunate as to secure as their

chaperon. She knew society (which I did not), as if it were in her

pocket. She knew exactly what girls ought to do, and she was so

agreeable herself that they never disliked having her with them.

She was very rigid, too, and would not let them stay late at

balls; but they loved and respected her so much that they never

rebelled, and now they love her as if she were really their

mother.”

 

A woman of elegant manners and of charming character, who will

submit to the slavery—for it is little less—of being a chaperon,

is hard to find; yet every motherless family should try to secure

such a person. In travelling in Europe, an accomplished chaperon

can do more for young girls than any amount of fortune. She has

the thing they want—that is, knowledge. With her they can go

everywhere—to picture-galleries, theatres, public and private

balls, and into society, if they wish it. It is “etiquette” to

have a chaperon, and it is the greatest violation of it not to

have one.

 

If a woman is protected by the armor of work, she can dispense

with a chaperon. The young artist goes about her copying

unquestioned, but in society, with its different laws, she must be

under the care of an older woman than herself.

 

A chaperon is indispensable to an engaged girl. The mother, or

some lady friend, should always